Ketch gave a groan of despair. “And them horrid young wretches’ll escape the hangman! I’d ha’ walked ten miles to see em—”
“Gracious, Sir John, what’s that you are talking about?” interrupted Bywater, as the choristers trooped up, “Escaped you! so we have, for once. What an agony of disappointment it must be for you, Mr. Calcraft! Such practice for your old hands, to topple off a dozen or so of us! Besides the pay! How much do you charge a head, Calcraft?”
Ketch answered by a yell.
“Now, don’t excite yourself, I beg,” went on aggravating Bywater. “We are thinking of getting up a petition to the dean, to console you for your disappointment, praying that he’ll allow you to wear a cap we have ordered for you! It’s made of scarlet cloth, with long ears and a set of bells! Its device is a cross beam and a cord, and we wish you health to wear it out! I say, let’s wish Mr. Calcraft health! What’s tripe a pound to-day, Calcraft?”
The choristers, in various stages of delight, entered on their aggravating shouts, their mocking dance. When they had driven Mr. Ketch to the very verge of insanity, they decamped to the schoolroom.
I need not enlarge on the evening of thankfulness it was at Mr. Channing’s. Not one, but had special cause for gratitude—except, perhaps, Annabel. Mr. Channing restored to health and strength; Mrs. Channing’s anxiety removed; Hamish secure in his new prospects-for Mr. Huntley had made them certain; heaviness removed from the heart of Constance; the cloud lifted from Arthur; Tom on the pedestal he thought he had lost, sure also of the Oxford exhibition; Charley amongst them again! They could trace the finger of God in all; and were fond of doing it.
Soon after tea, Arthur rose. “I must drop in and see Jenkins,” he observed. “He will have heard the items of news from twenty people, there’s little doubt; but he will like me to go to him with particulars. No one in Helstonleigh has been more anxious that things should turn out happily, than poor Jenkins.”
“Tell him he has my best wishes for his recovery, Arthur,” said Mr. Channing.
“I will tell him,” replied Arthur. “But I fear all hope of recovery for Jenkins is past.”
It was more decidedly past than even Arthur suspected when he spoke. A young woman was attending to Mrs. Jenkins’s shop when Arthur passed through it. Her face was strange to him; but from a certain peculiarity in the eyes and mouth, he inferred it to be Mrs. Jenkins’s sister. In point of fact, that lady, finding that her care of Jenkins and her care of the shop rather interfered with each other, had sent for her sister from the country to attend temporarily on the latter. Lydia went up to Jenkins’s sick-room, and said a gentleman was waiting: and Mrs. Jenkins came down.